Work Text:
Bernard Black disliked carpets. He also disliked curtains, tablecloths, shams, serviettes and any item which covered up things which didn't need covering and required laundering, including those antimacassar-whatsits his Great Aunt Flora had crocheted and scattered all around her house like little dead lap dogs. Come to think of it, he wasn't much on lap dogs either, or his Great Aunt Flora.
"Bernard, you've got to do something about this sticky spot on the floor," Fran said.
"I like it that way," Bernard said into an empty bean tin. It made his voice sound hollow and bizarre, like a space-robot. Who'd left an empty bean tin on his desk? Manny.
"No you don't, you just say that so you don't have bother doing anything about it," Fran said. "That's something of a life-mission with you."
"I'll have you know that my life-mission is to complete a translation of Remembrance of Things Past from the original French into Esperanto," Bernard said, raising his head enough to bat away at the empty tin. It fell to the floor with a metallic clang, scattering beans everywhere. Not so empty. "Also, to finish off one of those big silver things that have beer in them."
"Kegs?"
"More or less," Bernard muttered, settling back down on the desk. His bloody head felt like an empty bean tin.
"Really, Bernard, you must do something about this spot," Fran persisted. "Cover it, or wash it, or something. Twice this week I've walked by and my shoe has gotten stuck. I had to pry up my best red pump with a hammer."
"Maybe the floor likes your shoe."
"I like my shoe. Your nasty floor can't have it."
"Well why don't you wash my nasty floor, if it bothers you so much?"
"What?" Manny asked, coming out of the toilet. "Pardon, have I intruded on something?"
"I'm just trying to convince Bernard to do something about this health hazard," Fran said, perching on the stool.
"What, the mollusks? I think they've colonized – "
"No, it's – "
"Oh, you mean the broken front step? Yeah, I've been meaning to call – "
"Actually, I – "
"Or d'you mean that thing that's on the ceiling over the toilet? I decided to call it Humphrey – "
"She means the floor!" Bernard barked. "The nasty, sticky floor that everyone complains about according to Fran, probably because they've got nothing better to do than whinge about the state of someone else's shop!"
Fran and Manny both looked at him. "To be fair," Fran said pleasantly, "that poor little boy was trapped there for three hours before anyone noticed."
"He was a juvenile delinquent," Bernard said into the desk, but his heart wasn't really in it.
"Maybe if you – " Manny ventured.
"All right! All right! I'll knock off and buy a bleeding carpet, if that'll make you lot happy. The things I do for my employees."
"I'm not your employee," Fran said.
"Oh, really? Then why are you always hanging about my shop?"
Fran raised an eyebrow and put her nose in the air. "Mine's rather dull, if you must know," she said in a pinched voice.
"You can always talk to the rubbish bins with penguin feet if you get lonely," Bernard muttered, shrugging into his coat.
"What about the mollusks?" Manny asked.
"Ring the fire service," Bernard said, gesturing violently and knocking over the coat rack. "Or whoever you ring when sea-creatures colonize your plumbing."
"They've gotten into the coffee-pot now."
Bernard groaned and pulled a black balaclava over his head.
"Bernard, mind you do get a nice carpet," Fran said as he walked past her. "Find one in a colour that won't show the dirt. Plum would be nice."
Bernard growled, wrenching open the door.
"What about Humphrey?" Manny called.
"Don't feed him after midnight!" Bernard shouted, and slammed the door behind him.
Stomping was very good for relieving tension and anger, and Bernard stomped nearly half a block before he got extremely tired and started trudging along instead. Carpets, carpets, where did one buy a carpet? What the hell were they made out of? Wool? No, that was ridiculous, one didn't make carpets out of sheep. Bloody sheep.
He nearly trudged right past the twee little shop, covered in ivy and advertising hardwood floors and natural carpets, because his balaclava was pulled down over one eye. Bernard paused, trying to decide whether there was any benefit to having artificial carpet, and pushed the door open.
The ginger-haired girl at the counter in the back raised her head briefly, eyed his shabby coat and crooked balaclava, then went back to her book.
"If you're going to rob us, I don't think there's anything in here you can carry," she said with a yawn. "You can have some of those little carpet samples if you want."
"You're American," he said.
"Yup."
"Why the hell are you selling carpets in London?"
"Why are you dressed up like you're going to rob us?"
"My head was cold," he muttered, pulling off the balaclava. The girl gave him a sidelong glance, and he reached up to feel his hair. He couldn't actually feel it, and he discovered after a moment of grasping that that was because it was all sticking straight up. He shook his head, and assumed his customary sneer.
"I want to buy a carpet," he announced.
"OK."
There was a pause. "Aren't you supposed to, you know, show me some carpets?"
She jerked her head at the left wall. "Look," she said. "Carpets."
Bernard eyed her, nervously. Fran had been at him about his customer service again lately, telling him no one would come back to a shop where the owner wouldn't take bills over a tenner even though he had plenty of small change, and in fact some of them might be quite angry about having their style of dress viciously insulted. He wondered if this girl had been by the shop.
"Er," he said, wandering over to look at the carpets hanging from the rack. "Colours. I want a carpet that comes in colours."
"That's pretty much what they do," she said.
"Like plum. I need a plum-coloured carpet. Immediately."
"Is there one on the rack?"
Bernard eyed the rack, nervously. What bloody colour were plums? What did plums look like? Were they the pointy ones or the ones that grew in bunches?
"This one is called 'Bagel,'" he said. "Why is 'Bagel' a colour?"
"Some people like bagels," she said, turning a page.
"Yes, but why on their carpets? Who wants a carpet called 'Bagel'? That's like buying a car that comes in 'Rice Pudding.'"
She shrugged.
"And this one. This one's called 'Penne.' That's the most idiotic thing I've ever heard."
"'Penne' is a style," she said.
"What?"
"'Bagel' is a colour. 'Penne' is a style."
"I take it back. That's the most idiotic thing I've ever heard."
She shrugged again, but it looked like there was a tiny smile on her face.
"'Rigatoni'," he said, warming to his subject. "And 'Pastina,' glory be! What the hell is the difference between 'Penne,' "Rigatoni,' and 'Pastina'? And why am I so hungry for a spag bol all of a sudden?"
"What the fuck is a spag bol?" the ginger girl asked, putting her book down at last.
Bernard looked at her with pity. "You poor, ignorant Americans. It's a delicious pasta dish made with tomato sauce and ground beef, part of the native cuisine of the British Isles."
She went back to her book. "I don't eat meat."
"Or possibly Italy," Bernard said, stopping to think. "That could be why there's that reference to Bologna in the name. It would also explain why it's delicious. I don't think English food is allowed to be delicious, there's some kind of rule about that."
"Did you want to buy a carpet or what?"
Bernard frowned at her, making a large, elaborate show of folding his arms, and turned back to the carpets. The colours swam in front of him, much the way the books in his shop did most days, but eventually he found one that looked like a dress he'd seen Fran wear once. She couldn't complain about that.
"I want this one," he said, shuffling over to the counter, carpet in hand.
The girl looked up, closing her book but keeping a finger in her book to mark the page. "Interesting interpretation of plum," she said.
"Yes, well, that's just how I am, an interesting sort of chap," he said. "Interesting Bernard, that's what they call me! Always interesting."
She smirked. Up close he thought she was rather attractive, although it was hard to see with the balaclava pulled over one eye. He felt his face, then realized he wasn't wearing the balaclava anymore. Possibly he should get that eye looked at.
"Forty-six pounds," she said, punching numbers into the till.
"Forty-six pounds?" he repeated, shaking the carpet. "For this?"
"It's 100% wool."
"They do make them from sheep!"
She blinked at him. "Wool carpets? Traditionally, yes."
Bernard glanced around the room wildly, looking for another option. His eyes fell on the book in the girl's lap. "You’ve got that book! The one with the Victorian lesbians."
"You've read it?"
"Yes. No. Well, not as such. I used to sell it in my shop, but then people kept buying it, and then I kept having to order more, and then people would buy those, and the whole thing got so stultifyingly dull that I gave it up."
"Your shop? The one down the street?"
"Yes," he said. "Er. You've been in?" He looked around again, this time looking for exits.
"Yeah. A really nice guy who looked like an extra from Lord of the Rings sold me the book. My old copy got lost with my luggage."
"Ah," he said, heaving an inward sigh of relief. "Shame, really."
"Yeah. Although I bet some airport guard somewhere is really enjoying it."
"I'm sure," Bernard said
"So," she said, briskly. "Are you buying this carpet?"
"Well," he said. "It's not that it's not a nice carpet. I really like the, er, aesthetics. Very… woolen. Especially this fringy bit here at the end. It's just that – "
"Look, buy it or don't," she said. "The last five people in here wandered around for forty minutes without buying anything, except that one guy who wanted to keep petting the sea-grass carpet. Him I had to call the cops on."
"I think I've had that fellow in my shop too," Bernard said. "Short, blonde mustache, wanted to keep talking about the symbolism of prostitutes in Hugo while stroking the book spines?"
"Nah, this guy had brown hair. I'll keep an eye out for blonde mustache dude, though."
After a pause, Bernard rolled his eyes and pulled out a fifty-pound note. "Oh, what the hell. It's not every day you get a chance to spend forty-six pounds on a 100% all natural carpet made from sheep. The sheep are also 100% all natural, I assume?"
"Yeah," she said with a smile, finishing the transaction.
"Excellent," Bernard sighed, leaning forward to drum his fingers on the counter. She handed him his change, and he waved it away. "Keep it. Sales skills like yours deserve a hefty commission."
"Thanks," she said, pocketing it. "I'll spend it in your store on more of the books I lost. Either that or fritter it away on women and wine."
"Not a bad idea, come to think of it," Bernard said. "Sun's over the yard-arm. Care to join me in a pint? Carpet-buying is thirsty work."
She looked around the store and shrugged. "What the hell. It's not like anybody's going to buy anything anyhow."
***
"This is not plum," Fran said. "This isn't even close to plum. I don't think this colour has even met plum."
"Wha…huh?" Bernard asked, struggling to open his eyes. He was lying under something heavy and scratchy. Bloody blanket.
"This colour is an insult to plum, Bernard. You've mortally wounded plum's feelings."
Bernard managed to focus his eyes, and looked down at the carpet covering him. It did not, in fact, appear to be plum, now that he thought about it.
"What colour is it?" he mumbled. Good old Fran. She knew everything.
"It's lime green, Bernard."
"Ah."
"Although," she said, bending to examine it. "It's not a bad carpet, colour aside. The weave is very nice. Is this wool?"
"Sheep!" Bernard slurred.
"Well, let's see how it looks on the floor. Why you chose to sleep under it…" Fran pulled the carpet away and gasped.
Bernard was cold. Bernard was usually cold, because England was a bloody miserable place requiring eight hundred million layers of clothing at all times, even in August, but this was beyond the usual chill.
"Bernard," Fran said. "Where have your clothes gone?"
Bernard surveyed his naked body and thought back to last night. As was the general result of such a thought process, not much came back, although he definitely remembered something about ginger hair.
"Sheep," he said again.
"Bernard," Fran said, shaking her head. She hadn't looked away, he noticed. He thought friends were supposed to do that, when one was naked, or cover their eyes, or something. That’s what happened on the telly, at least.
The front door jingled as Manny strode in, disgustingly cheerful as always and carrying one of those extra-hot no-foam two-pump mochacino things he was always drinking. Just looking at him made Bernard's hangover develop a little mini-hangover of its own.
"Morning," Manny sang out. "You'll never believe what Humphrey – oh." He stopped dead in his tracks, looking between Fran and Bernard. "Is this going to be something I'm not allowed to remember?"
"Sheep!" said Bernard.